"You wouldn't have written a check because the hors d'oeuvres weren't that good. I mean they're very good but they're not good enough to pay what you paid," he told the guests at the event at Glen Oaks Country Club in West Des Moines. "I mean they're like $100 a piece for a little piece of cheese or whatever. You're not doing it for me, you're not doing it for the party, you're doing it for the country."

About 280 tickets were sold for between $2,500 and $75,000, boosting the total take to between $1.8 million and $2 million, said Rick Gorka, a Romney campaign spokesman.

Romney focused some of his 17-minute speech on blasting Obama's presidency, saying the Democrat put in place "a series of policy choices and mistakes that didn't get the country going," such as Obamacare. But his central theme was individuals are what drive America not government.

"Iowa has to make sure next November he's out of office. We're counting on it," he said.

Romney said he has five proposals he's convinced will "get our economy roaring back:" take advantage of low-cost energy to bring manufacturing back to America, fix schools, improve trade and open new markets for American goods, stop spending more than the federal government takes in and champion small businesses.

"I'm going to put our kids and our teachers first and make sure we put our teacher unions behind," he said.

He told a story about a fruit seller in Tunisia who set himself on fire after a government bureaucrat blocked him from setting up his wares.

Maybe the loudest applause Romney received for the evening was a riff on Obama's much-maligned "you didn't build that" comment. Romney said he'd just met an Iowa manufacturer whose business has jumped from 200 employees to 1,700.

"Did the government do that for you? Did you build that yourself?" he asked the entrepreneur, to laughs and applause from the audience.

Iowa's rain-challenged summer was one of the first things Romney touched upon.

"I'm a little concerned about the drought, though, I mean how are you guys doing? Are you going to be all right?" he said. "We're hopefully going to see help here and maybe some better weather, but we're counting on people doing their best to make it through some very difficult times."

He also said he won't be here for the premier event of the Iowa summer.

"Oh, I'm going to miss the state fair, and that butter cow, I tell you," he said.

Guests dressed in summer dresses and business suits listened to Romney in a newly remodeled dining room with a cash bar.

"We didn't go too fancy. We kind of kept it local and summer," executive chef Jeff Strahl told a handful of reporters covering the event.

The fundraisers' organizers asked for an appetizer in red, white and blue – "and blue's kind of a difficult color for food," Strahl said. He went with cherry tomatoes stuffed with cream cheese and topped with a blueberry, he said.

For dinner, it was steak and lobster, then bananas foster flambé.

Couples who paid $10,000 were invited to take a photo with the GOP presidential candidate, posed in front of a blue backdrop flanked by an Iowa flag and a U.S. flag. Romney asked everyone how they were and chatted a bit, said two women who volunteered at the event, Judy Schliesman, a piano teacher from West Des Moines, and Kim Mallisee, a homemaker from Clive.

In the crowd were several GOP elected officials, including Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz; State Auditor David Vaudt; Iowa House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer; state Reps. Renee Schulte, Jack Whitver, Peter Cownie, Ralph Watts, Kevin Koester and Chris Hagenow; and state Sen. Brad Zaun. Former Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn was there, as well.